Last week the government ratified the first new trade deal since Brexit – and your MP didn’t get to vote on it. Is this what the Brexiteers meant by taking back control? I’m talking about the UK-Australia trade deal. It is fairly insignificant in economic terms, the government’s official impact assessment suggests the increased trade […]
Hey, guys. I have been working on something for a while now, partly to feel more useful and partly to take back some control from an indifferent leadership. Covid Fit is a campaign trying to reduce some of the risk factors associated with Severe Covid. We are in a much better place now if we […]
I watched the Tory leadership debate on Monday 25 July. I almost wish I had not. It was unedifying, and the BBC questioners failed to ask questions on Brexit, Rwanda and Northern Ireland but did allow far too much time on earrings, suits and the imagined failings of education in Leeds in the 1990s, which […]
From “Cameron Cutie” to “Johnson Jingle” – so-called because she is one of the last to sing the outgoing prime minister Boris Johnson’s praises, albeit out of tune with the public – Mary Elizabeth “Liz” Truss has had a meteoric rise over the past twelve years of Conservative government. It is all the more astonishing […]
“Quit the EU to save our #NHS” said the Daily Express It was the wrong diagnosis, but voters believed it. The latest news is that the NHS is facing “the greatest workforce crisis in its history”, which is bringing our health service to its knees. NHS England is facing a chronic and dangerous shortage of […]
The cross-party Health and Social Care Select Committee slammed the “absence of a credible government strategy” on the NHS. Sadly, we think the government’s strategy is quite clear – it is just not what they have been telling us it is. The Health and Care Act has given ministers all the powers they need to […]
Where do we go from here? The British electorate faces a challenge like never before, writes Jeremy Hall, from Devon: The nightmare of the Johnson era has gone forever (?), but a Johnson crony (Sunak or Truss) will be imposed on the rest of us by 160,000 Tory Party members who are richer than, whiter […]
Johnson’s ‘deep state’ conspiracy theory has, quite rightly, attracted a lot of negative comment. This article identifies some of the collisions his government has had with people and institutions who stand in its way. This government has consistently acted against people and institutions which seek to subject government action to scrutiny and accountability. Here are […]
Wow! It’s our second birthday on 23 July. We started out as West Country Bylines and now we’ve completed nearly 7 months as West Country Voices and all thanks to the same great team of editors and proof readers, excellent writers – some new, some longstanding contributors – and a growing band of loyal readers […]
In any sane context the car crash that is Conservative education policy would be enough to bring down a government by itself. The schools bill before Parliament has been so savaged in the House of Lords that ministers have stripped out 18 of the key clauses, leaving it bereft of its original purpose, yet doing […]
‘Are we in a new Covid-19 wave?’ asks molecular biologist, Emma Monk This week the Office for National Statistics (ONS) announced we had hit a horrifying milestone: recording 200,000 Covid deaths in the UK since the start of the pandemic. But look around the shops and on the trains and you’d be forgiven for thinking […]
How we vote is mostly about our feelings, and then we hunt around for ways to rationalise those feelings. But look at the data, and if you voted Tory or Brexit… just think about this stuff. I’m not taking the p*ss. Just consider… If you voted Tory in 2010 to reduce debt, you made a […]
If you’ve watched either of the two ghastly Conservative leadership debates, you’ll know that this country is headed not for any change for the better (as if!), but for a slightly different flavour of awfulness, incompetence and ideology than that which was served up by the liar, Johnson. I cannot say I am surprised that […]
Invited to come to Britain in the 1950s, when the country was massively short of workers (sound familiar?), Asquith Xavier left Dominica where he had been a police officer and in the army. For ten years, he worked as a porter at Marylebone station in London. Then, in the spring of 1966, the 46-year-old decided […]
“Mordaunt” is a Norman surname. It belonged to one of the Conqueror’s henchmen who came over with him in 1066 and is thought to derive from the French expression, “mort d’entaille” (or something similar), which quite literally means “death by cuts”. Liz Truss, now Foreign Secretary and Penny Mordaunt’s former boss at the Department for […]
Dear West Country Voices, Like many others up and down the land, I was delighted by the news of Boris Johnson’s resignation. It has taken long enough. However, my euphoria has rapidly dissipated as I have forced myself to witness the pathetic farce of the leadership race. Even referring to it as a ‘race’ with […]
Accidently just watched Liz Padded Hernia Belt and her leadership bid speech. It looked like it was filmed through her tights on a Nokia and if some eager young SpAD had plonked the instructions to a combi-boiler in front of Truss, she would have given it equal credence. A curiously and suddenly profound Northernness, peppered […]
Mr Rushforth acknowledges that Brexit is not ‘done’ and had, in the great tradition of the adaptable Mr Johnson, two versions of his cartoon – one with Brexit crossed off and one with it not. Johnson certainly f**ked it up, along with everything else he touched. Will the new leader and PM consider it done […]
“In 2021, the environmental performance of England’s nine water and sewerage companies was the worst we have seen for years. Measured against our four-star rating, most of them went the wrong way: down. Four companies (Anglian, Thames, Wessex, Yorkshire Water) were rated only 2 stars, which means they require significant improvement. Two (Southern and South-West […]
If the Conservative Party truly believed in the democratic robustness and fairness of the first past the post system, it would surely use it for its own leadership elections. Rishi Sunak would have won in the first round and it would all be done and dusted. We plebs must be happy with a system which […]
Dear West Country Voices, As a matter of urgency I write to remind you of the court case challenging the Government’s policy on forced deportation to Rwanda of asylum seekers and refugees to the UK. There is a live protest outside the Royal Courts of Justice in London TOMORROW (July 12) with a LIVE share […]
Here we go again. Like the shoe-stretchers my mum got me for Christmas, the Tories are the stinky gift that keeps on giving. Let’s dive in… 1. Previously on The Week In Tory: thermonuclear tribunal magnet Boris Johnson battled to survive, as Steve Baker told the BBC “I believe the Conservative Party is the only […]
The contrast was dramatic and instructive. Only a day after walking around the deer park at Petworth House, I took a footpath through the grounds of Knepp Castle, a pioneering ‘rewilding’ project in the heart of Sussex. The two estates are less than half an hour apart by car, but a world apart in terms […]
A Bill led by Baroness Jenny Jones through the House of Lords received strong cross-party support at its second reading today and holds out a real opportunity to save tens of thousands of lives every year, while greatly improving the quality of life in towns and cities across the country – including the South West. […]
There is no question that the fates of Boris Johnson and Brexit are inextricably linked. It is impossible to imagine that the UK would have abandoned its 40-year relationship with the EU had it not been for this young journalist making his name through inventing nonsense stories about the Eurocracy and for the same man, […]
So, the Pincher lies were what did it. They were the final straw which made some MPs at long, long last say ‘enough is enough.’ Not the towering mountain of Brexit lies. The ‘Get Brexit Done’ lie. Not the threats to the Good Friday Agreement and the breaking of international law. Not the litany of […]
“Let him get on with the job…he’s a breath of fresh air” The political sections of our national media (TV, radio, newspapers, social media) are now dominated by one topic: how much the PM knew about the behaviour of Chris Pincher MP when he, Johnson, appointed Pincher as Deputy Whip. If we the UK voters say it’s […]
‘Stop it now, get up from your desks, walk away, no more.” In an extraordinary call this serving civil servant urges his colleagues who are facilitating Boris Johnson’s ‘lies’ to quit [and tells us not to underestimate the danger posed by this prime minister and complicit government. We are on the way to becoming a […]
Dear Sheryll Murray MP I am writing to you with grave concerns that the government is going to remove special Covid sickness rules for NHS staff in the coming days. My fellow NHS colleagues have had to work tirelessly against a background of a decade of poor investment to fight a pandemic. Boris Johnson and […]
Steve Baker is standing for election to the Conservatives’ all-powerful 1922 committee. He may want Boris gone (good), but as a Brexiteer cultist who will he want to replace him? A tweet and a couple of articles to remind us of what Mr Baker is all about…